how much of this curriculum is necessary for a FAANG job?
I’d love to go through all of them, but I’m constrained with work as well, so I’ll have to prioritize.
I’d love to go through all of them, but I’m constrained with work as well, so I’ll have to prioritize.
You can always just hack the interview process if your primary goal is a job at a particular Big Co. In that case, learning all of the material is probably an extraordinarily inefficient path toward your goal.
But "any dumbass can hack can hack mega-corp hiring processes" is sort of obvious. If your goal is to do the real thing, as opposed to knowing how to hack the American Corporate Tech Giant mechanism for determining whether you know the real thing, then the answer is "teaching yourself the content knowledge in this list sort of misses the forest for the tress".
I think a lot of low-cost/open source/self-directed programs sort of miss one of the points of education. The reason for learning all that stuff in CS courses is more than just the content knowledge. It's also the intellectual history of the field, the problem solving approaches, how people in this field communicate, etc.
If you think of fields like Econ or Law or Medicine, it's easier to see. There's some raw content knowledge (the rules of evidence, human anatomy), but also there's the huge amount of stuff around that content knowledge. Like, yes you need to know the rules of evidence and the names of every bone. But... there's also a bunch of other stuff you're supposed to be picking up as a result of going through the process of learning that material. The self-study approach somehow misses a lot of the "stuff you're supposed to learn as an effect of learning the material", especially in CS.
Hacking the hiring process has a good effort vs reward ratio, but it's also high risk. The risk is that obvious gaps in the candidate's background surface after starting the position. Which usually doesn't turn out well: best case career stagnates and worst case the candidate ends up on the bottom of a stack rank when things get lean.
It's a risk that can be taken in a calculated way. Sometimes things turn out well. Sometimes not.
It is possible to learn this on the job. But with hindsight, my advice would be to just take the easy way out and learn it beforehand.
I understand your concern about not gaining implicit knowledge while surrounded by peers, but I’ve gained “the ability to think” through my other course of study, and your concerns don’t seem to be attached to a solution. Rather, it seems like a desperate attempt to gatekeep over an increasingly egalitarian field. And sorry, but there isn’t much communication to be learned among CS undergrads.
The knowledge I lack on the job will be taught as I’m exposed to my shortcomings, as is the case with most jobs.
In addition, my school’s CS department was lacking, so most of it was poorly taught, and I relied on self-teaching regardless. Once I get through hiring season, I’ll worry about covering the remaining material before I begin work.
"Once I get through hiring season, I’ll worry about covering the remaining material before I begin work."
Someone who has spent the time wading through this stuff might consider that somewhat insulting. Your future co-workers, say.
ok? If I have an entry-level offer in-hand 6 months from now and I’m behind a few textbooks, I think I can manage. Sorry to break it to you, but a lot can be done if you’re healthy and avoid distractions.
I remember a similar conversation with a CTO of some cheap company that wanted to offer me 100K and arguing that he knew many risk takers who took on high paying jobs in bigger firms and failed. That was many years ago. Now my comp is approaching 1M, my job is super risky and demanding, but I don't care as in the worst case I quit with enough money to not work anymore. I know many vps and execs in smaller firms and their attitude is the same: they don't give a flying f..k so long as the pay/risk ratio is appropriate.
Not really. It is standardized at some FAANG companies but not others.